I finally got an AlphaServer - and have no clue what I am doing I spent a week trying to figure this out on my own but didn't get very far. The system came with just a single drive that did not boot to any OS. I have 5 drives I purchased a year ago to use in an Alpha. I put these in and they were empty too, or so I think. I did finally manage to get to the >>> prompt so I can get to an ARC prompt too. I decided my first task should be to get the drives set into an array, so found documentation for configuring the cables, terminator etc. The controller is the Mylex DAC960, after some hard searching I found what should be the necessary file to config the array - RA200RCU.exe. I was never able to get the file to run, from either prompt. the same trouble when trying to upgrade the firmware, I get the following error..."Native D-Stream TB miss occurred" Then it wants to reboot the console. After much discouragement I decided to just try and boot the experimental LIVE Alpha CD, with pretty much the same results. Actually a little different, the cdrom device never shows up when I do a "Show devices" I am hoping someone out there can get me going in the right direction.

-Trooper82_________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?

Last edited by trooper82 on Sat Dec 04, 2004 9:29 pm; edited 4 times in total

Alpha's seem to be pretty picky about cd drives. IIRC, my alpha (PC164) had to be set up with the cd drive as the primary IDE master with no primary slave. If I didn't set it up that way, I couldn't see the drive from SRM, so I couldn't boot linux from the cd. once I got it installed, I swapped stuff around, linux sees all the drives with no problem. No particular experience with alphaservers, tho..._________________The power of Unix coupled with a pleasing interface and scores of usable desktop applications is a disgusting perversion of everything Unix stands for.

BTW- is the Chena solid yet? I spent 2 years there in Fairbanks, really nice place.....if you like cold and snow _________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?

Well I managed to configure the drives. I was trying to do the configuration utility all wrong. You need to go to the "Run program" menu option and type A:filename to get it started. I am right now initializing the logical drive. Hope to have the install going shortly after this finishes. But I still need to find the right commands/setup to boot from a CDrom.

-Trooper82_________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?

This will give you a list of the devices, then look for a device that says RRD in the description (or that you can identify as a cdrom. Insert the CD and type boot (device name: for example DKB600 - or whichever one is you drive)

I am making progress! It would seem that I have the cables , terminators, drives all hosed up. I have decided to go back to my techie grass roots......start with the minimum amount of hardware necessary. I got rid of the error above, and actually am seeing the cd boot. Now all I need to do is get the array setup correctly and I should be on my way to Alpha-Gentoo heaven.

-Trooper82_________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?

Seems the 2004.3 and 2004.2 Alpha LiveCD's do not have the DAC960.o module.(EDIT- They are here I was looking in wrong place...sorry Alpha devs) I tried copying them from a second cd I installed in the system but get an error about the ELF not being correct. I do not have the actual error wrote down now, but will update this later this evening. I did some browsing of the forums and see there are several options to get the needed module.

1. Install on different HD that is connected to the onboard SCSI - not an option, I have no drives that will work.

2. Create a new LiveCD with added support for the Mylex Dac960 controller - the only option I can use that I have found......need to learn how to create my own LiveCD now

any other suggestions?

- Trooper82_________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?

Last edited by trooper82 on Sat Dec 04, 2004 9:32 pm; edited 1 time in total

1. Found 3 different versions of the Alpha LiveCD floating around.
The one listed below and a 2004.2 version and the latest 2004.3 - I couldn't get them to work - all 3 said module could not be found when doing a 'modprobe DAC960'

2. Found this bug report that says the DAC960 is working in 'gentoo-alpha-2004.2-20040730.iso' I couldn't get it to work - said module could not be found when doing a 'modprobe DAC960'

3. Had quite a time with hanging @ 'Calibrating delay loop...' during the booting of the LiveCDs.

4. By process of elemination I figured out that I got past that error if I removed one or two of the 3 CPUs installed in the machine.

5. Best of all, I found an old Model 712/60 here in the basement that had a 2GB 50 pin scsi drive I could use to do the initial install on, then my hopes were to compile a kernel that would see my RAID5 hanging off of Mylex controller. I was able to boot into the OS once, but before I could check to see if my card was recognized, I knocked the "Leatherman" out of the slot I had it in to hold the micro switch closed on the side panel of the server. Unlucky for me I had used ext2 for my FS and ended up loosing the partition.

6. Won a major battle as far as I am concerned, I ran upstairs and started dancing when the thing booted to Gentoo.

Hope someone else can learn from my mistakes in this post. Would still like to figure out my SMP issues. Anyone have any suggestions? I have tried all three processors individually , so I know they are all working. (in each slot too)

-Trooper82_________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?

Well I have an update or two to add. I spent the entire day waiting out a kernel compile on a fresh install in this beast, before trying to boot into a fresh system on the latest iso release. My plan was to give the kernel patch a try for my Mylex controller. But, I seemed to be hanging at boot with the following.

Code:

ABOOT: Starting kernel boot/vmlinux.gz with arguments root=/dev/sda2

I ended up reloading the LiveCD and trying to repair what ever was out of whack. During the boot I thought I would see if SMP was working on the LiveCD, I don't remember checking it before so I dmesg|grep 'SMP' and see it is not working. Hit the halt button and reboot to SRM prompt. type in 'show config' and see something that catches my eye.....

CPU0 P
CPU1 F
CPU2 F

Now I know these were working before, so I must have done something that flagged an error in srm. so I did a 'clear_error ALL' the system hung...probably the wrong syntax or command? Hit the power button, swapped the position of 2 CPUs and rebooted typed in 'show config' again and see .....

CPU0 P
CPU1 P
CPU2 P

Interesting...... Let's boot the LiveCD again.....'boot DKA6 -fl 0'

check dmesg|grep 'SMP' again...hmmmm looks good
run 'top' touch the '1' key and

HOLY CRAP!!! .... I see 3 CPUs working away

So I am rebuilding the kernel while writing this, hopefully I can get past the ABOOT hang mentioned earlier. I had the same thing last weekend, wrote the error down in my notebook, but unfortunately not the way I resolved it. I think it had something to do with ext2 and ext3. I used fdisk as described in the Alpha install handbook, I am used to running cfdisk. I set the partition type to ext2 for my root partiton because I couldn't figure out how to set it to ext3. I prefer ext3 so when I made my fs I used the -j option which creates ext3 and not ext2. I may have to go back to ext2? Which means I won't be finished for a while yet.....got to head back to work tomorrow._________________The band is just fantastic
That's really what I think
Oh, by the way, which one's PINK?